The authors examine conditions under which 'Veblen effects' arise from the desire to achieve social status by signaling wealth through conspicuous consumption. While Veblen effects cannot ordinarily arise when preferences satisfy a 'single-crossing property,' they may emerge when this property...

This paper presents new empirical evidence in support of the view that a significant fraction of total saving is motivated by the desire to leave bequests. Specifically, the author finds that social security annuity benefits significantly raise life insurance holdings and depress private annuity...

In this paper, the authors critique the assumption on which Robert J. Barro's dynastic model is predicated and a rgue that this framework is not a suitable abstraction in contexts in which the objective is to analyze the effects of public policies. Th ey formally consider a world in which each...

This paper extends pre-existing results concerning voluntary private funding of public goods. The assumption that individuals care about themagnitude of their own contributions only insofar as these contributions affect the aggregate level of expenditures is shown to have untenable implications....

This paper analyzes a model in which individuals care about both consumption (intrinsic utility) and social status. Status depends on public perceptions about an individual's predispositions rather than on the individual's actions. However, since predispositions are unobservable, actions signal...